During the Cold War, which lasted almost half a century, the Soviet Union and the West worked to undermine each other without risking open conflict in Europe and potential nuclear war. Top European and NATO officials currently argue that Russia is reviving its policy of attrition, using hybrid warfare tactics to destabilize the West and sow division.<\/p>\n
Khodorkovsky, who spent ten years behind bars in Putin\u2019s prison system and now lives in London, downplayed the effectiveness of Western sanctions in swaying the Kremlin, saying they were \u201ccreating some pressure on the Russian economy, but nothing dramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was similarly skeptical that Ukraine\u2019s long-running drone campaign against Russian oil refineries would cripple the Kremlin\u2019s war machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEven the most powerful drone, even a Tomahawk missile, can hit about two hectares at most,\u201d Khodorkovsky, the former owner of oil giant Yukos and once Russia\u2019s richest man, explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cA typical facility in Siberia typically spans 1,500 hectares. The damage being done is the equivalent of stepping on someone\u2019s foot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In reality, Khodorkovsky argued, the only moment when Putin\u2019s grip on power could realistically have been broken was during the first two years after his full-scale invasion began \u2014 if Russia had suffered a decisive military defeat in Ukraine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the Cold War, which lasted almost half a century, the Soviet Union and the West worked to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2595,2000,46647,299,5187,2348,177249,2597,2661,332,7339,9322,2663,657,333,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-554325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-drones","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-eu-russia-relations","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-history","14":"tag-mikhail-khodorkovsky","15":"tag-military","16":"tag-oil","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-russia-sanctions","19":"tag-russian-politics","20":"tag-sanctions","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-vladimir-putin","23":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115506445279884458","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}